Additions and Deletions
by neverthesamegirl
Summary: Amy can easily name the people whose presense in her life has impacted it the most: her mum and dad, Rory, the Doctor, of course...but then, it just might be the absence of someone that's had the greatest effect of all.
1. Prologue

_In the dark of the car park she's just a smudge of colors against the grey of the pavement and the black of the shadows. The overhead lamps cast a sickly, sulfurous tinge to her pale and down-turned face as the lazy, swinging lights of an idling ambulance highlight first the blue of her uniform and then the red of her hair. She makes hardly a sound to break the quiet of night, save for the shuffling of her feet and the occasional muttered curse. The distance is closing between her and her car, and her keys have still not been found in the bottom of an enormous canvas bag she rifles through as she walks._

_Despite her distraction, she doesn't break stride; not until she yanks at what she hopes is the end of her key chain and suddenly half a banana, an empty water bottle, and an open bag of crisps come tumbling out into her path._

_Eyes rolling, annoyed, she bends to the ground, and that's when she feels it._

_It seems to start in the pit of her stomach and spread through her veins: an icy numbing ache that almost vibrates in her bones. She shivers and her flesh rises into bumps, but when she reaches up to pull her cardigan close against the sudden breeze, she notices: there isn't any breeze. The air doesn't seem to move at all, but instead hangs thick and still around her like a heavy blanket. She's frozen and time seems to stand still. The only awareness she has is for the feeling of dread threatening to spill into her lungs and drown her._

_And then just as quick it starts, it's over. The air is moving again, and her limbs are her own. Behind her a car door slams and when she gasps she realizes she's been holding her breath._

"_Oh dear! So sorry – didn't mean to startle you. Going home, are you? Well, good night, Miss Pond!"_

_When she does find her keys and she's reaching her hand out to unlock the car door her hands are still shaking._


	2. Chapter 1

Amy didn't expect the Tardis to still be in one piece. She'd seen it frozen, blasted by heat, crashed into sheds, and generally knocked about on a regular basis, but this last time had been something else entirely. The Tardis had cracked and groaned like a ship being torn apart by the waves, while Amy and the Doctor had been thrown against the first solid objects their bodies encountered. The engine – or what she thought was the engine – had made a high, keening moan that reminded her more of an animal than any machinery she'd ever seen before. And when the rolling and tossing had stopped, and Amy was reasonably sure she could unwrap her arms from around her head without cracking her skull on a support beam, she looked around her and sighed. A sigh mixed of relief…and disappointment.

She'd asked for Greece. She _longed_ to see Greece, _ancient_ Greece, in the time when the Greek Empire was the center of the world. She wanted olive trees, and art, and poets, and warm, salty breezes. She wanted to meet Plato and ask him what he was on about!

What were the chances he'd gotten it wrong? …again?

The Doctor popped into her vision, buzzing around the center console, checking gauges and flipping levers. Whether those levers needed to be flipped or he was using them as an excuse not to meet her gaze, she wasn't sure. She rose to her feet, walking slowly toward him and shooting imaginary laser beams through her eyes until he turned and looked at her.

"Greece?" she asked, not even bothering to inject hope into her voice.

"Greece! Yes!" The Doctor spoke as if the thought had just occurred to him. "Yes, Greece is lovely…lovely Greece. We must definitely _do _Greece…" This last bit was said guiltily, and without meeting her eyes.

Amy was about to launch into a tirade when Rory came bursting into the room.

"Good…bloody…hell!" Amy couldn't help but smile at his attempts at cursing; he never had been very good at it. "_What_ was that? I thought we'd run aground or something. My bed ended up in another room. Good thing I wasn't in it at the time… God, I thought the whole bloody ship was coming apart! Amy!" he stopped his wild ranting long enough to hurry over to her. "Amy, are you all right?" He raised his hands to her face and began a check for bruises, cuts, and signs of concussion.

When he tried to check her pupils, Amy batted his hand away and grasped it in her own. "I'm fine!" she insisted with the usual force, "despite _NOT_ being in Greece…" This last remark was punctuated by a glare in the doctor's direction.

"It took him twelve years to get back to Leadworth, you think he'd manage to hit Greece the first time around?" Satisfied that Amy was still in one piece, Rory had begun to fuss over a jam stain that had been deposited on his vest during the crash.

"Well, if this isn't Greece," Amy reasoned, "then let's fire up the engines and try again!"

There was an audible pause before the Doctor delivered his reply. "Wonderful idea! Give it another go, right…just one thing. It seems we'll be making a bit of a stop first."

"For how long?" Amy was indignant. "What kind of stop?"

"Oh, a very necessary, very important kind of stop. Shouldn't take long!"

"Doctor…"

"Just check a few things…change a few fluids…"

"DOCTOR!"

He stopped fussing with the controls and looked up at Amy. Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest, and an unbecoming shade of red had risen into her cheeks. Her eyes were flashing fire. Rory's interest in his stained clothing had intensified, though the doctor noticed he had taken several small steps out of Amy's reach.

"Ok," he sighed, melting under the heat of her glare. "I don't know how long. I didn't plan to come here! The Tardis…just brought us here. I don't know why, or where _here_ is, exactly."

He watched Amy's face. If anything, her eyes seemed to glow even brighter. By the time a small smile began spreading across her lips it was a mirror image of the Doctor's own.

"Well," she said, glancing first at a nervous Rory before returning to the doctor's gaze with confidant eyes, "I suppose we'll just have to find out where _here_ is."


	3. Chapter 2

Amy was the first one out of the Tardis. She practically skipped through the door, hand rising to shield her eyes from the sun, blinking at the sudden change of light. As her eyes adjusted, she began to take in her surroundings. Her…oddly familiar surroundings.

As the realization hit, her face fell. Huffily, she turned to address her companions, who were just now bumbling their way out the door.

"All right!" she announced loudly, "false alarm! Everybody back in the Tardis!"

"Wh-what?" Rory muttered, stumbling into her, his eyes squinting beneath his raised hand. "Why? What's he done now? Where are we?"

Amy inhaled and then exhaled dramatically before delivering her reply: "Leadworth."

"Leadworth?" the Doctor and Rory repeated in unison, looking from Amy to their nearby surroundings in disbelief.

"Leadworth," Amy repeated flatly.

"No," said the Doctor, walking away from the pair "no, no, no! Can't be Leadworth. Readings are all wrong for Leadworth!" As he spoke he sniffed, and then licked, a nearby tree. "You must be mistaken, something must be off."

"Mistaken? Mistaken, you say? How could I be mistaken about a place I've lived in for _fifteen_ years! This is Leadworth!"

"Definitely Leadworth," echoed Rory. "We're in the village green."

"There's the post office, there's the library, and there's Mr. Harvey, the butcher, for God's sake!" The man she was pointing at waved awkwardly before pretending to check his watch and hurrying away.

"It may look like Leadworth," said the Doctor, "but the readings I took in the Tardis are all off. We should be on our guard when we investigate."

"Guard, yes, right," Amy scoffed. "So many dangers to watch out for in _Leadworth_. We might trip on a poorly maintained garden path and stub a toe. I say we call off the investigation, get back in the Tardis, and head for Greece…or anywhere else reasonably warm and cultural."

The Doctor was going to argue, when Rory mounted his own campaign. "Hold on a minute! We don't have to run off so quickly. It'll be nice to make a little stop at home. I mean, we didn't exactly pack when we left…we could say 'hi' to the family, grab a few things, a toothbrush…you could pick up your mouth guard!"

Amy colored at Rory's mention of her dental appliance, and shot the Doctor an icy look to wipe the stupid grin off his face. Her anger only cooled when she saw the sheepish look of apology in Rory's eyes. She _had_ mentioned to him that she wanted it. She wasn't wearing it the night the Doctor took her – there's something so unglamorous about sleeping with a bright pink chunk of plastic in your mouth on the night before your wedding. Now she was paying the price of a sore jaw every morning, not to mention what she must be doing to her teeth.

What the hell, maybe they could spend a few hours in Leadworth: pick up a few personal items, take Rory's dog for a walk. They could go 'round hers, and Rory could make her one of his special omelets, and they could eat it out in the back garden. Her stomach made the decision for her when she considered the last time she'd eaten a decent meal.

"Ok, fine," she conceded, "we can take a little detour in Leadworth. First stop, my house: specifically, my kitchen!"


	4. Chapter 3

Amy's kitchen was a sorry state at even the best of times. When her Aunt Sharon had been alive, the refrigerator was always full of food. If nothing else, the woman would provide all the outward appearance of domestic bliss for her orphaned niece, even if she'd failed at all the "emotional nonsense" that would have provided her with a loving home. Hence Amelia's clothes were always washed and pressed, the house was always spotlessly clean, and the kitchen was always fully stocked.

After Aunt Sharon's death, it took Amy awhile to consider the house to be her own. She'd always felt like a slightly unwelcome guest before, and now her mind boggled at the idea that here was a whole entire house to do with as she wished. She'd never really gotten the hang of it.

Which is why Amy's refrigerator had alternately served as hospice care for an aging population of dead and dying fruit and veg and as a monument to fasting that would have made any Buddhist proud.

The refrigerator she opened now was in neither of these states.

Food lined, not crowded, the neatly appointed shelves. Leftover dinners of a still edible quality were stacked across the middle shelf in their matching Tupperware containers. The crisper drawer was full of veg, none of which seemed to be nurturing additional life forms. There were eggs in the egg tray, butter in the butter tray, and a wholesome assortment of bread, meats, condiments, and yogurt pots everywhere else. A carton of milk that was neither empty nor spoiled sat next to a full bottle of premium, fresh-squeezed orange juice.

Immediately, Amy knew that something was very wrong: since when did she drink soymilk? There was no way she had purchased the items in this refrigerator. What had the Doctor done this time? Had they come back in the past, and her Aunt Sharon was still alive? Could she face seeing her again, after all these years? And would she have to deal with a younger, double version of herself? Amy could remember what she was like as a teenager, and didn't fancy the thought.

Suddenly, an idea occurred to her. She reached in and seized the milk carton, scanning the sides for the sell-by date. She let out a sigh of relief: 25/05/2010. The relief was short-lived, though, as one option was eliminated and she was forced so choose another. If her aunt hadn't filled the fridge, then who had?

Rory had come to join her, and now stood by her side, also staring into the depths of the appliance. By his face she could tell he was just as confused as she was.

"Er," he began, "are you sure we're in the right house?"

"No," came Amy's reply, "not entirely."

Meanwhile the Doctor came charging into the room, shoving the pair aside to take up his own position leaning into the cold, incandescent glow. "Can't decide what to make then? Well, doesn't look like we're short on options! Blimey! Ooh, look at this…marinated artichoke hearts! But what to put them on…" He pulled open the freezer. "A ha! This will be lovely," he declared as he dragged out a gourmet frozen pizza. "I wonder if we have any custard…"

If his companions didn't share his enthusiasm for the upcoming meal, the Doctor didn't seem to notice as he busied himself around the kitchen, turning on gas burners, opening cupboards, and generally making a mess of things. Amy and Rory stood off to the side exchanging worried looks.

Just then, above the crash and clatter of the Doctor's culinary efforts, Amy heard a sound to make her heart drop into the pit of her stomach: someone was opening the front door.

She saw her own wide-eyed terror reflected in Rory's panicked expression, but before they could convey their dread to the Doctor an unfamiliar voice was calling her name from the entryway.

"Amy?" the voice was soft and feminine, with a subtle Scottish burr. "Amy, hon, is that you? I didn't expect you to be home. I went to the garden center…got that fencing for the back flower beds…you _have_ to help me put it up this time, _no_ excuses."

The strange voice was accompanied by other, more familiar sounds: shoes being kicked off onto a mat by the door, shopping bags dropped outside a hall closet, and keys being deposited in a ceramic bowl. Soft footsteps came padding in their direction.

"Amy, I…oh! I'm sorry, I didn't know you had company." The woman who had entered the kitchen was red-haired and freckled, with round green eyes set in a small oval face. She was a few inches shorter than Amy, and a couple years older, by the looks of her. In fact, minus a few minor differences in stature, facial features, and shade of ginger hair, this woman could have been a slightly older version of Amy.

Despite Amy's continued silence, the woman chattered on, eyes scanning with slight concern the state of her kitchen. They came to rest on Rory. "Rory!" she exclaimed with genuine warmth. At the sound of his name, Rory jumped and looked ready to bolt from the room. "Well this is a nice surprise." If possible, Rory's eyes got even bigger as their new companion laid a small, pale hand across the side of his face and planted a kiss alongside his mouth.

Amy's face began to color and she was about to defend her rights as Rory's fiancée, when the woman turned to face her and she remembered that she had no idea who this woman was or what was going on. The familiarity and trust she read on the woman's face told her she was not similarly troubled.

The Doctor came barreling back into the room. He'd disappeared into the back garden, and came back now with a fistful of herbs, ripped straight from the ground, roots dangling and dropping clods of dirt onto the spotless kitchen floor. "Just the thing I need for Pizza Margherita!" he declared, tossing the herbs into the sink and starting to peel a clove of garlic.

"Amy," the woman half whispered, tension creeping into her voice, "aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?"

Amy's throat was bone dry, and she wasn't sure she'd able to offer a reply. Fortunately, she didn't have to. "Hello! I'm the Doctor!" the Doctor called cheerily over his shoulder as he began to chop the garlic.

"The…doctor…who?" With her face scrunched up in confusion, she looked even more like Amy than before. "What doc…oh!" Something dawned on the woman. "A doctor, huh?" She gave Amy a conspiratorial look that left her feeling more confused, which she hadn't thought possible. "This must be your doing." This last statement was directed at Rory and accompanied by an affectionate look that nearly had him blushing. His mouth moved, desiring to make a reply, but no sound came out.

"Fine then!" she conceded, mood lightened. "You two keep your secrets. I need to get dressed for work anyway; it's almost three o'clock." She started moving back toward the hallway. She stopped in front of Amy. "Just please, _please_ Amy: clean up the kitchen when you're done, yeah?" Her pleading look changed to a smile as she added, in a lower voice, "And let me know if he wants chicken or beef!"

With that, she exited the kitchen, climbing the stairs to the first floor and leaving the three companions much as she'd found them: Amy and Rory stood off to the side, staring at each other in stunned silence, and the Doctor, oblivious as always, creating havoc at the cooker.

He was the one to break the silence. "Well, she seemed nice! So who's she then?" When no answer came from behind him, he finally stopped what he was doing and looked around at his friends. Only then did he notice that all was not quite right with the pair.


	5. Chapter 4

Amy swallowed hard and shook her head to try to clear chill of fear from her mind before she attempted to answer the Doctor's question. "Doctor," she said quietly, "I have no idea who that woman is."

"Nor do I," added Rory, finally regaining the power of speech. "Though she certainly seems to know me…" He blushed as his hand explored the spot where she'd kissed him.

"Well now, isn't this _interesting_!" The Doctor was really starting to enjoy himself now. He was positively giddy with excitement, and determined not to let the tension and trepidation still painted across his companions' faces bring down his mood. "Quite a mystery, wouldn't you say? This calls for an investigation! Come on gang, let's look for clues!"

Though fear and panic were still foremost in Amy's mind, she couldn't help but roll her eyes at the Doctor as he darted from the room in the direction of the hall closet. What sort of "clues" he hoped to discover there, she couldn't guess.

After taking a deep breath to still the pounding of her heart, Amy decided to comply with the Doctor's plan. It wouldn't hurt to take a look around; there _had_ to be something here to explain what was going on. There had to be an explanation for why a woman who looked so much like herself could mistake her and Rory for someone she knew. (Even if she couldn't possibly fathom what that explanation might be.) After exchanging a sigh and a silent look with Rory, Amy headed into the adjoining lounge while Rory made for a stack of papers and post on the kitchen counter.

A cursory glance around told her that this both was and was not her home, all at the same time. The architecture was the same, of course, and most of the old furniture she'd grown up with was there; but there were little touches here and there that completely changed the character of the room.

Amy never spent much time in her lounge. What was the point of sitting on her own in a big room meant for a family to gather? A girl on her own didn't require that much space, so she constrained most of her activities to just a few rooms: her bedroom, the kitchen, and the upstairs bathroom were the main ones. Everywhere else stayed pretty much as her aunt had left it, a shrine to a life that had never really belonged to Amy anyway. This room, the one that stood before her now, was lived in.

Everywhere she looked, there were signs that this was a room constantly occupied. The sofa (the same one Amy had been grounded for spilling orange squash on when she was 10) was covered by a fuzzy knit throw and a collection of colorful cushions. An array of magazines, on the subjects of cooking, gardening, and tasteful celebrity gossip, was stacked on the coffee table next to a vase filled with flowers picked from the garden. There was a telly set against one wall, and a laptop plugged in and charging on the side table. A paperback novel with a playing card stuck in as a bookmark was perched on the arm of a chair, as if the reader had only just set it down to go and fetch a cup of tea.

What ultimately drew Amy's attention was a grouping of picture frames arranged on a shelf along the back wall. There was about a dozen of them, all different sizes and different frames, some simple, and others more elaborately decorated. None of them matched, and Amy couldn't help but smile at how much her aunt would have hated that. Once she'd glanced over the group as a whole, her eyes finally came to rest on one picture in particular. Closer examination left her skin feeling cold.

The picture was of herself and the auburn-haired owner of the house, the one who was currently upstairs taking a shower, by the sound of things. It was the sort of picture where the subject (in this case Amy herself) reaches the camera out with one hand and takes her own picture. It must have been taken on a holiday, because Amy and the woman are wearing beads around their necks and cocktail umbrellas stuck in their hair, and she can just make out the bright turquoise blue of a swimming pool in the background. She and this woman have their arms around each other and they're laughing so hard you can see their back teeth. But more interesting than the photo itself is the single word printed across the brushed aluminum frame: _SISTERS_.

It took only a moment for the implication to sink in, and even then she wasn't sure she could accept it. Her eyes searched frantically over the other photos, hoping to find evidence to contradict that single, scorching word. Perhaps the photo was in the wrong frame, or perhaps it didn't mean a literal _sister_ sister. But the pictures in the other frames only confirmed it. There were two ginger girls clad in matching floral dresses and posing behind their Easter baskets. A little freckled toddler bending over to kiss an equally freckled baby in her bassinet. A young Amy, just a few years back, clad in cap and gown and ridiculously large sunglasses, giving a thumbs-up to the camera, a slightly older version of herself laughing in the background.

For a moment, all she could do was stare numbly at this monument to a life that didn't exist. Finally, her reverie was broken by the sound of Rory calling from the kitchen.

"Amy! You need to see this!" He was using his "trying keep calm in a difficult situation" voice; he was rubbish at it. Normally, Amy would have laughed.

Instead, she called his name, using her own version of that voice, and making it much more believable. "Rory!"

"I'm here, but you need to come in here and see this!"

"Rory, come in here please."

"But Amy, you really ne-"

"RORY COME IN HERE NOW!"

She could hear the stumble as he tripped over his own feet in a hurry to comply. "Amy, what? What's wrong?"

She just pointed at the offending photo, not even turning to watch his reaction.

It took him a moment to come up with one. First he looked, then he stared, then his mouth hung open in disbelief. "What does that…am I reading that correctly?"

"I'm afraid you are."

"But you don't have a sister."

"I know I don't have a sister!" she hissed, punctuating her words with a slap to his ribs. "I can't take this anymore, I have to know what's going on! DOCTOR!"

"There's something else," Rory added nervously, "that thing I wanted you to see." For the first time she noticed the slim white card he was holding. "I found this in that stack of papers."

The card that he was holding was a wedding invitation. The invitation itself looked very familiar, but as she read the words, she saw they'd gotten the names wrong. At least, they'd gotten _one_ of the names wrong.

_Karen Elizabeth Pond and Rory Christopher Williams cordially invite you to witness the exchange of their nuptials…_


	6. Chapter 5

She doesn't know how long she stared at the delicate gold letters before she could think of anything to say. "Karen Pond," she said, dully, clutching the white cardstock in both hands.

The Doctor chose that moment to enter the room, bursting in with his usual enthusiasm, wearing an old winter hat of her aunts and brandishing an umbrella. "Well, gang, what did we find?"

"Karen Pond," Amy repeated, thrusting the invitation at him as he came to stand beside her. He glanced at it briefly before looking back at Amy; she pointed to the photograph on the shelf. She gestured forcefully at the offending photo and in a voice that was becoming increasingly more animated she repeated the only coherent thought she could grasp onto: "Karen Pond!"

"Does that name mean anything to you?" asked Rory, but he didn't get a reply. Amy's eyes met his only briefly before they were turned on the Doctor and awaiting his explanation.

He looked from the invitation, to the photo, to Amy, and then back again several times before his hand shot up with lightning speed to slap himself on the forehead. "Of course! Stupid! I knew something was off! Why didn't I see this sooner?"

"See what sooner?" Amy was annoyed, and desperate for answers. If the Doctor had any and wasn't sharing while she lived through the most harrowing ten minutes of her life she was going to rip out _both_ his hearts. "Why do I suddenly have a sister I never had before, and why is she marrying my boyfriend? Who is she and how can she be here?"

The Doctor was ready with an answer. "She's not here! We're there!"

"Where?"

"Here! In an alternate universe!"

Amy was exasperated. "What does that mean?"

"It means we're in a universe that's like ours, but it's not, ours that is, it's alternate…"

"I know what an alternate universe is!" Amy spat out impatiently. "But what does it _mean_ for _us_! Why weren't you able to tell us sooner? It seems like a reasonable explanation for why things are so familiar and so different at the same time…"

"Because it's not that simple!"

"It never is," observed Rory dryly.

"You see, we shouldn't be here! That is, we shouldn't be _able_ to be here! Travel between parallel universes is impossible! I mean, there was a time when you could, and there was this one time in the past…"

"But if it's impossible," Amy cut him off before he could get lost on a parallel train of thought, "then how is it that we're here?"

"I don't know," the Doctor admitted, "but that would explain why the ride here was so…adventuresome. The walls of the universes have weakened, somehow."

"Again, I have to ask," Amy went on while she could still get his attention, "what does this mean for _us_?"

"Will there be problems if I say 'I don't know' again?"

This time both Rory and Amy treated the doctor to a murderous glare.

"Right. Well. Let's just say we're bound to find out. In the meantime, the investigation continues! Now that I know what I'm looking for, I should have a reasonable chance of finding it. If the walls of the universe are weakening, it has to be having some calculable effect on this world."

"Calculable effect, yes…" Amy muttered. She wasn't entirely satisfied with the Doctor's explanation, but there was one thing she did understand: this was not her reality. The pictures in the lounge, the woman upstairs, the wedding invitation…they had nothing to do with her, and that was an enormous relief. The thought did a lot to ease her mind, and she turned to Rory with a smile. "At least I know I won't have to worry about a future where some long lost sister of mine shows up to steal you away."

Rory returned her smile. "You have absolutely nothing to worry about. No sister could compare with the original Amy Pond." He reached out a hand to stroke her cheek before pressing a soft kiss to her lips.

A loud clatter behind them had them bolting apart in surprise.


	7. Chapter 6

The woman, Karen Pond, was standing in the doorway, dressed for work in blue hospital scrubs, face white as a sheet. The bag she'd been carrying had been dropped to the ground, forgotten, its contents spilling around her feet. As Amy watched, color crept back into Karen's face, her eyes regained focus, and her mouth began to move, first silently, and then issuing a desperate whisper, "I don't believe this!" Her voice got louder, "This can't be happening! I don't _believe_ that this is happening!"

"It isn't what you think…" Rory began…

"It 'isn't what I think'? Are you kidding me? I find you snogging my sister in my very own house just weeks before our wedding and you're telling me that I have somehow _misinterpreted_ the situation?"

"Well, er, yes…" Rory looked to Amy and the Doctor for help, but none was forthcoming. "You see, I'm not your fiancée, and Amy, this Amy, well, she's not your sister." It was beginning to occur to him how ridiculous he sounded. "We're from an alternate universe," he finished feebly.

For a moment, Amy was afraid the woman might suffocate as her angry flush deepened to purple. Finally, she opened her mouth and released the pressure that seemed to be building up in her chest. "An alternate universe? What sort of fool do you take me for? Of all the horrible things to happen, to find out that my sister and my fiancée, the only two people in the world that I love and trust, are sneaking around behind my back, well that's bad enough. World shatteringly bad, I might add. But to then discover that not only is the man I love, a man I thought to be brilliant and reasonable, a complete gibbering idiot, but he thinks me to be one as well!"

Finally, at the insult to Rory, Amy was moved to speak. "I know it doesn't seem to make any sense, but Rory is telling the truth! I don't know how to explain it, and I don't know how to prove it to you, but it's true. Doctor, a little help here would be appreciated…"

Before he could speak, Karen was turning the focus of her anguish onto Amy. "I don't know what he has to do with this, but I'll spare him the indignity of contributing to this ridiculous lie!" Suddenly her eyes softened and her rage faded to hurt. He voice dropped to just above a whisper. "Amy, how could you do this? After all we've been through? In my darkest nightmares I might imagine a world where Rory would betray me, but you?" She took a step forward, and reached out a hand to Amy. Instinctively, Amy raised her arms in defense. Karen was about to go on, when suddenly something caught her eye. Her gaze followed Amy's forearm as it dropped back to her side. "Where's your tattoo?"

"My what?" Amy was unprepared for this change in topic.

"Your tattoo, that little black star on the underside of your left forearm. Where is it?" Karen grabbed Amy's arm and began running her fingers over the smooth white flesh. "This…this isn't possible. It was there just yesterday; we were talking about whether you were going to cover it up for the wedding. You couldn't have had it removed, there's no scar there. It isn't makeup, either…" Karen rubbed at the skin with her thumb, hard enough that it began to burn.

"Ow!" Amy yanked her arm away. "I've never had a tattoo! I wanted one when I was a teenager, but I just never got around to it…"

Karen stared off into space, chewing at her lip and frowning, as Amy, Rory, and the Doctor exchanged nervous looks. Suddenly her head snapped around and her gaze locked onto Rory. "Come here!" she barked, causing him to jump. Before he could react, she was standing in front of him, spinning him around and yanking up his shirt. Amy watched in fascination as the strange woman's hand traveled between all the familiar landmarks of Rory's back: the two prominent moles on his right shoulder blade, one shaped like a heart and the other a kidney bean; the shiny, white scar on his left where another mole had been removed; and the fine dusting of blonde hair that started on his lower back and disappeared into his waistband. Her hand stopped at a spot over the left side of his ribcage. Slowly, she lowered his shirt and took a step back.

When Rory turned round to look at her, he couldn't read the expression on her face. Her eyes searched his for a moment, hoping to find, what? Finally she turned to look at Amy. "It isn't there," she said simply.

"What isn't there?" Rory asked gently.

"The other night when you stayed over," Karen began, "I guess I was, well, a little enthusiastic…I hadn't trimmed my nails…" Rory blushed for about the dozenth time since he'd met this woman when he realized where she was going with her story. "Anyway, I'd left an angry red scratch across your ribs. I've put ointment on it each morning since, and now it's just…gone. Without a trace. It was never there."

For the first time that day Karen looked at Amy and Rory as if they were strangers. Amy thought the look might break her heart.

The Doctor was ready to speak now. He stepped up to the sad and bewildered woman, quietly taking her hand. "Karen," he began gently. "There are some things we need to explain. I think you should sit down."


	8. Chapter 7

The conversation went about as well as you might expect a conversation to go if it involved time travel, parallel universes, and a bewildered young woman who'd just seen alternate versions of her sister and her fiancée snogging. That is to say, there were plenty of tears, a healthy amount of shouting, and an abundance of dumbfounded, incredulous stares. Throughout the Doctor's explanation, Amy and Rory did their best to keep their faces looking composed and sympathetic, but inside they were more than a little unnerved. Karen kept staring at them with red, swollen eyes, searching for just the briefest spark of recognition from her loved ones' doubles. Each time she didn't find it the look of defeat that swept over her features was devastating to witness. Finally, she seemed to arrive at some sort of acceptance.

"I keep hoping to find out that this is a cruel practical joke being played on me, but my sister, and my fiancé, they would never, never subject me to this…and so you must be from some parallel world, as you say. Fine, I accept that; I just have one question: where are _my_ Amy and Rory?"

The three companions looked to each other in unison: it was a good question. The room they inhabited contained more than enough photographic evidence to confirm the existence of another Amy and another Rory, and yet they'd seen neither hide nor hair of them since arriving in Leadworth several hours previously. Karen tried each of their mobile phones, but each went immediately to voice mail.

"Where would you expect them to be right now?" queried the Doctor.

"Well, Amy should be in class…"

Rory found that idea more than a little funny. "Amy's a student? Voluntarily? I thought Amy and school had a mutual understanding to stay out of each other's way."

Karen looked offended. "Amy was a great student! Ok, so maybe I had to threaten and cajole her just a little bit to get her to finish her assignments, but once she got the work done, she was brilliant! And anyway, she graduated from University last winter; she's teaching creative writing as part of an after school program while working on her own writing."

"Her own writing?" Amy was amazed: she'd always made up stories as a child, mostly about the Doctor and the imaginary adventures they would have together, but when it came time to put pen to paper Amy rarely got past the first page. She loved making up the stories, and drawing the pictures, and building the puppets, but her hand moved so much slower than her brain, and she couldn't catch the words fast enough, and all that writing just seemed too much like school work, anyway. She went through a phase where she grew tired of Rory not playing his part as the Doctor quite the way she wanted him to and tried writing him a script. It didn't last long: her handwriting was too messy, and Rory was terrible at memorizing lines, so she went back to her old method of issuing stage directions through clenched teeth in a not-so-subtle whisper, and pouting until Rory got it right. Amy almost smiled at the memory of what a little brat she'd been.

The Doctor broke her out of her reverie and brought everyone's attention back to the matter at hand: "And Rory, where should he be right now?"

"Rory should be at the hospital," answered Karen, looking at her watch. "In fact, I should be there as well. We both work the second shift." She dug her phone out of her scrubs and checked the screen. "Dammit! They've called twice already. Excuse me, for a moment…I'll have to make up some sort of excuse. That is, if I still have the capacity for rational thought…" Karen left the room to make her phone call.

"She seems to be coping rather well, considering everything we've dropped on her," observed Rory.

The Doctor grinned, "Yeah, she's brilliant! These Ponds are made of sturdy stuff."

Rory's face adopted a quizzical look. "There is something I still don't understand. Well, there's quite a lot I don't really understand, but there's one thing in particular at the moment—that is, one thing I'd like to ask you about." As usual, he was taking his time getting to the point. "So, I think I understand how these parallel worlds work: some points in time are not fixed, right?" The Doctor nodded. "So sometimes, at these points, events happen in two different ways, causing a split in the realities and creating two separate, parallel worlds." The Doctor waved his hand indicating that Rory should go on. "So here's what I don't understand: if each new reality is created when events branch off from what's already happened, then how can Karen be Amy's _older_ sister? If Karen came first, how can our world have just an Amy?"

The Doctor paused to think and was about to rattle off a list of theories when he noticed Amy chewing her lip and frowning. "I think our dear Amelia might be able to answer this one."

"What?" She startled, not prepared to share her thoughts. "Well, I'm not sure, but I think…I think my parents may have had a baby before me." Rory's eyebrows shot up his forehead; this was not something Amy had ever shared with him before. "It's not something my parents ever talked to me about. I did wonder, though…they were married for four and a half years before I was born, and didn't have any children after me, even though my mother loved kids. And one day, when I was five years old and playing up in the attic, I found an old trunk with baby stuff in it: there were a few pieces of clothing, a silver keepsake rattle, and a baby blanket with a 'K' on it. I asked my mum if it had belonged to my Auntie Karen, who was my mother's sister who had died when they were kids. My mother said I shouldn't be playing up there, and looked incredibly upset, so I never asked her about it again…"

The three of them were still considering this new information when Karen herself walked back into the room. It wasn't difficult to decipher that her conversation with the hospital hadn't gone well. She barely looked up as she entered the room, and kept staring at the phone in her hands; they were shaking.

"So, how'd it go?" The Doctor was the first to break the silence. "Can they do without you for a day or two?"

She ignored his question. "Rory never showed up. They were angry they'd be short two nurses, because Rory wasn't there, and he hadn't called." No one dared to interrupt as she went on. "So I called the teen center to ask Amy if she knew where he was. She wasn't there, either: she wasn't there, and she hadn't called to say she wouldn't be there!" Desperation was rising in her voice. "Doctor, what the hell is going on? Where is my family?"


	9. Chapter 8

When it happens, Rory's first thought is it must be a seizure of some kind. But what sort of seizure affects two people at the same time? One moment Karen is standing in the doorway, clutching her mobile between white-knuckled fingers, her wild eyes demanding an explanation, any explanation for the sudden surrealistic turn her life has taken. The next moment the phone is slipping from her fingers and her body seems frozen, rigid with terror. When he brushes past Amy to check Karen's pulse, he notices that Amy seems to have fallen into the same trance-like state: muscles ridged, eyes staring, no response to Rory as he shouts her name.

If Rory was left in the dark by the sudden and confusing episode that overtook his companions, Amy could describe it for him exactly and succinctly: time simply stopped for a moment. First it seemed to expand and stretch around her, pulling apart into infinity before snapping like a broken rubber band, leaving nothing but emptiness echoing in its wake. She could have lived and died a thousand times in that moment: somewhere in time and space she's dying there still. The moment was finite but unbound, like the surface of a sphere, existing in a discreet pocket of space, yet having no beginning and no end. Just when she thought she would go mad, she felt time sliding back into place, and Rory was there, gripping her arms and shaking her, saying her name over and over.

Relief flooded his body the moment she came back, when her eyes finally focused and met his own. The storm of panic swelling inside finally crashed and dissipated, and he let go of her arms to pull her into an embrace. When he did so he noticed he'd been gripping her arms so hard his fingers had left marks in the tender flesh.

Over Rory's shoulder, Amy could see Karen leaning against the doorway, her eyes wide and her breath coming in ragged gasps. Their eyes met, and she knew instantly: Karen had felt it, too. Amy let go of Rory and walked over to the woman who could have been her sister. She tried to think of something to say, but for once in her life, words failed her. So instead she reached out and pulled her into a tight embrace. At first, Karen stiffened, remembering that this look-alike, as convincing a replicate as she may be, is not her actual sister. But the feeling is too familiar, and she let herself forget for a moment and leaned into Amy's embrace.

The Doctor, until now a silent observer, stepped forward to put a hand on each woman's shoulder. "That is something neither of you should have ever experienced. I'm so sorry."

Amy wiped an unbidden tear from her cheek before turning to face him. "What was it? Why is it Karen and I the only ones who felt it?"

"You're not the only ones," the Doctor answered. "I felt it, too. Of course, I'm used to it: it was the flow of time. What you felt was a small tear ripping just a little wider."

Karen turned to the Doctor with concern and wonder: "You're used to it? Do you mean you can feel that all the time?"

He nodded sadly. "It's my birthright as a Time Lord."

"That doesn't explain why Karen and I felt it," Amy reminded him.

"No, it doesn't. But I do have a theory about that. Wait here just a moment." With that, the Doctor bolted from the room, and a moment later they could hear his footsteps running up the stairs to the first floor.

At first, the three of them left alone didn't know what to say to each other. Rory stood next to Amy and quietly took her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. The small gesture didn't fail to escape Karen's notice, and she winced in pain. Amy squeezed back once before dropping his hand and turning to Karen.

"So," she coughed awkwardly, trying to add levity to her voice, "I have a tattoo in your world, do I?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes; yeah, you got it when you were sixteen." Karen looked back at the grouping of pictures against the wall as she remembered. "You were having such a terrible time with Aunt Sharon: she didn't like the boys you dated or the clothes you were wearing, and she'd just thrown out this awful pair of jeans with rips up the legs and marker pen scribbled all over them that you were so fond of, and you were determined to get even. You came to me and told me you were planning on getting a tattoo. I should have let you have your little fantasy, you would have forgotten all about it in a day or two. Instead, I tried to talk you out of it, which is ultimately what goaded you into it, I'm sure. You were so furious at me for "taking _her_ side", and always telling you what to do: you just had to do it. You were always so stubborn!" Karen looked at Amy with a genuine smile on her face. At her remembrance, the smile faded. "That is, she was always so stubborn…"

It was Rory who broke the awkward silence that followed. "This world, that world, or the next world, it doesn't matter: Amy Pond is stubborn as a mule." For a moment, the two women just stared, eyes wide, mouths open in disbelief: finally, they laughed. Rory couldn't help but notice that their laughs were almost identical. The Doctor returned just as Amy was planting a playful slap on Rory's arm.

"I knew it!" he cried triumphantly. "There's a crack!"

Two pairs of eyes greeted the Doctor with blank, curious stares; only Amy grasped the significance of his remark immediately. "It can't be! You mean it's here, too? Is it following me?"

"What's following you?" asked Karen.

"The crack on my wall!"

"Oh, that crack on the bedroom wall—no, it's not following you; that's always been there. My Amy was always scared of it, too: she said she could hear voices on the other side. She made me sleep in there with her until she was twelve."

For a moment, Amy was jealous of her other self. How many nights had she lie awake, wishing there were someone there with her, to reassure her and keep her safe from that horrible crack? What would it have been like to have a sister to share her fear with?

Karen went on. "But what is the crack? What does it mean that we have a crack, too?"

"It's not that you have a crack as well," the Doctor explained, "it's that you have the same crack—the exact same crack that appears on our Amy's wall in our world is on your Amy's wall here. And it's not just a crack in the wall—it's a crack in time, in the skin of the universe; that crack runs from our Amy's world through countless others, shifting and distorting along the way, but the important thing, the most important thing, is that it ends here! Ends or begins, rather, it doesn't matter which: we are at the terminus of a major rift in the fabric of the universe!"

The three humans stood amazed, mouths open in wonder and fear; the Doctor, however, was practically glowing with the thrill of excitement and a new mystery. In any other circumstance, Amy would have lit up right alongside him. Not this time; this time it was too scary. This time it was too close to home, and too close to what mattered to her. Finally, she saw what Rory had always tried to warn her about in the beginning: the terror of a man so enlivened by tragedy, smiling and vigorous as the world crashed around him. A chill ran through her and she shivered.

Rory remembered something the Doctor had said. "You said the crack was ripping wider, that that was what Amy and Karen felt a moment ago. What does it mean that the crack is getting bigger? Why now, after all these years? And why couldn't I feel it?"

"As for why it's getting wider, I don't quite know yet. As for what it means, well, let's just say that you _don't want_ to know. Amy and Karen are feeling the rift because they've spent their lives living on top of that crack: they're sensitive to it. Every molecule in their bodies, especially Amy's, since it was her bed it was next to, are attuned to that rip in time. If only we could figure out when the crack started widening, we might be able to pinpoint the event that triggered it."

Karen was thoughtful. "I think," she began cautiously, "I think it started sometime last night…I was in the car park, coming home from work; that's when I first felt…time…stop. I didn't know what it was or what had happened, but…"

It didn't seem as if she would go on. The Doctor prodded her gently, "Yes, but…"

"Well, for a moment, when it first started, I felt this sadness…almost despair, really. I don't know why, but I thought of Amy and Rory…" Her eyes grew wider as she began to put together the pieces in her mind. "I was worried about Amy and Rory, and now I don't know where they are!"

"We'll find them, Karen," Amy promised with more conviction than she felt. She had no idea if she could deliver what she promised, but her heart was warming to this woman. She liked the idea of having a sister, and it was tempting to pretend, for just a moment…

But then she remembered the kiss Karen had given Rory. Did gaining a sister mean losing a lover? In this parallel world that contained both a Karen and an Amy, Rory had chosen Karen. Would her Rory have made the same choice, if there had been a Karen to choose? Amy wasn't always nice, and she did take him for granted: ever since they were little kids, he had been there, following her around like a lovesick puppy dog. She remembered with guilt the day she realized he was in love with her, and the long days that passed after that before she returned his love. Her hand reached out to clasp his, if only to reassure herself that eventually she'd made the right choice.

The Doctor was still plowing ahead full steam. "Of course we'll find them! But for the moment, there's nothing we can do. Or rather, nothing you can do…I have a few ideas I'd like to pursue. You three should stay here, and get some rest. It's late! I'll be back before you know it."

Before any one of them could protest, he was out the door, off to God knows where. The three of them were left, once again, to stare awkwardly at each other.

"Come on," Karen finally spoke. "Let's get something to eat. We can probably finish the meal your friend started…that is, if what he was making was intended for human consumption…"


	10. Chapter 9

If Amy hadn't witnessed the act of the Doctor cooking just a couple hours before, she might have worried that wild animals had got in and ransacked the kitchen. Food was everywhere: half chopped veggies piled next to a cutting board, a bottle with olive oil dripping down its sides on the cooker, a frozen pizza doctored with extra ingredients thawing on a baking sheet, and over the whole of the kitchen, just a light dusting of flour. For a moment, it looked as if this might just be the last straw for Karen. Amy and Rory prepared themselves for an explosion.

Instead, she sighed; "Well, the pizza can go in the oven, that should still be Ok. Rory, if you would finish chopping up these veggies, we'll make a salad. And Amy, grab a bottle of wine from the rack over there and start it breathing." As an afterthought, she added, "Oh, and feel free to grab one for you and Rory as well." The humorous glint in Karen's eye did a lot to ease the tension, and in no time, the three were sat down at the kitchen table enjoying their meal.

In the middle of the feast, Karen raised her half-empty wine glass to her face in contemplation. "You know what? Wine is _magic_! Today I've been confronted with time travel, parallel worlds, rips in time and space, double versions of my sister and my fiancé having it off, and a bowtie and tweed-clad alien who makes a hell of a Pizza Marguerite, as well as a hell of a mess of my kitchen…" The reminder of the state of her kitchen seemed as if it would derail her for a moment, but she soon remembered where her speech was going. "But you know what? S'fine! It's all _fine_. Just a little bit of vino makes everything O K."

Rory hid a smile behind his own raised wine glass. Karen was most definitely more than a little sozzled. Not that she didn't have every right to be, of course: as she said, it was a lot to take in in one day. It was the first opportunity they'd had since meeting her to relax a little, and Rory was taking the opportunity to compare and contrast his childhood sweetheart with her newfound "sister". There were a lot of similarities there in addition to the red hair and freckles: the same confidant, authoritative demeanor; the same incredible ability to adapt to new situations; even the effect of red wine on their twin pale complexions. Rory gave Amy a fond look as he noticed the same flush that had overtaken Karen's visage start to creep into Amy's cheeks.

Amy returned the look with a wink, and Karen paused, a sad smile settling on her face. "Oh, oh I'm sorry…" Rory began.

"No!" Karen quickly interrupted. "No, there's no reason for you to be sorry; you come from another world, one that has nothing to do with me. You're in love with Amy! I accept that. I just wish I knew where my Rory was…"

It looked as if she might fall silent once again. Amy couldn't bear to see the woman brooding and moody. "So," she began, trying to sound cheerful and not forced, "how did you and Rory, your Rory, end up together?"

Karen smiled. "Wow! It's not often I get to tell this story. I've known Rory for so long, just about everyone knows our history. Well, he used to play with Amelia and me when we were kids. I suppose he was more Amy's friend than he was mine—the two of them used to have their own little world. Rory was the only one to go along with my sister's mad games of make believe."

Amy nodded and smiled: it was exactly the same in her world. All of the other kids would be off playing football, or kiss chase, or riding bikes, and Amy and Rory would be out in Amy's back garden, or down the cellar, or in her bedroom, playing "Amelia and the Doctor" yet again.

Karen went on, "It was our last year of school that Rory and I really started getting close. Amy started dating boys and had less time for Rory, but he still kept coming 'round the house. I'd make him a cup of tea, and we'd talk. It's amazing how you can know someone your whole life and not really know that much about him. It turned out he and I had a lot in common: we loved classic rock and quiz shows and detective novels, and we both wanted to go to nursing school. He talked about taking care of his mother when she was drinking, and I talked about taking care of Amy after our parents died. He confessed that he kept coming around the house because he wanted to see me, and I confessed that I always put on lip gloss before he came over, and we kissed for the very first time, out in the back garden, leaning against the shed. We've been together ever since."

No one knew quite what to say when she had finished her narrative. Of course, Amy and Rory knew that the people Karen was talking about weren't _them_; not the _real_ them, anyway: these people existed in another world, and what did that world mean to Amy and Rory as they sat here in this strange, familiar kitchen?

Karen could read the unease on her companions' faces. "Well, I think I've had enough wine and enough talk of alternate universes for one evening. I'm going to try to get some rest. Amy, if you want, you can have your…er, my Amy's room to sleep in."

"That's Ok!" Amy was quick to protest. "Rory and I will make do in one of the other rooms. Don't worry about us, though: we know our way around."

"Of course you do. Good night, then." Karen left the wrecked kitchen, and in a moment her footsteps could be heard mounting the stairs to the first floor.

Amy looked around at the remains of their meal. She stood and began clearing their plates, carrying them to the sink, and searching for a clean rag to start mopping up the mess on the counters. "Well, I never was one for housekeeping, but I reckon the two of us could make a dent in the job. Watcha think, Rory?"

A quick answer was not forthcoming. Rory was sitting in some kind of reverie, frowning and chewing on his lip. After a pause, he looked up from the spot on the table he'd been fixating on and met Amy's eyes. "Why are we together?" he asked simply.

Amy was taken aback. "As if you need to ask! After all we've been through together! You're the only one who's always been there for me."

Instead of satisfying him, her answer only seemed to deepen the blackness of his mood. "Exactly," he said sadly.

"What do you mean 'exactly'?" Amy's confusion bordered on anger. "You're my best friend and I love you! Since when is that not enough?"

"Maybe it was never enough!" Rory's voice was becoming more animated as he spoke. "Think about it, Amy: what if there had been someone else, _anyone_ else? After your parents died, I mean: what if you'd had someone to care for you and look after you? Someone besides your stupid, selfish aunt; someone who genuinely cared for you; what then? You would have never needed me."

Amy couldn't think of anything to say right away. Answering his question meant re-writing her own history: of course she'd needed him, of course there was no one else…his love and acceptance of her from the time they were kids was a touchstone in her life. When the world was unreliable, and filled with dying parents, uncaring relatives, and madmen in blue boxes who turned one's world upside down and then left, there was one thing, one person only, who had proved themselves reliable to Amy's exacting standards: Rory. Trying to imagine not needing Rory meant un-imagining Amy's entire life.

Rory mistook Amy's silence for confirmation of his worst fears. He was about to storm out of the room when she caught his arm.

"Wait!" The voice that stopped him was desperate. When he looked in her eyes they were shiny with tears, as rare on Amy as teeth on a hen. Her hands were gripping his arms as if afraid he might disappear if she didn't hold on. "I can't imagine a world where I never needed you, and I don't want to; that's the important thing: I don't want to!"

A more eloquent woman might have gone on, but Rory knew how difficult even a speech as small as this one was for Amy. This was the girl he'd dated steadily for more than a year before she would call him her boyfriend. It had been almost three before she whispered, "I love you" in his ear, and that was only because she was slightly tipsy and thought he was asleep. It was still 50/50 odds whether she'd let him hold her hand in public. For Amy Pond, admitting that she needed someone, and that she didn't mind that she needed them, was like reading a love poem out on the evening news would be for anyone else.

As Rory often did when trying to understand Amy, he took a deep breath, and felt the fear and anger slide through him and into the floor. He raised a hand to her face and smiled as the anxiety left her eyes. With his thumb, he caught the single tear that had escaped the iron grip of her lashes. Before he could kiss away the wet trail left over her cheek, he saw her expression change; determination entered her eyes.

"Now I have a question of my own," she said. "If I'd had an older sister…"

Rory's bark of laughter stopped her finishing the question. "Never in a million worlds," was his quick reply. Finally he pressed his lips to hers, and they let the tension dissipate as they melted into each other arms.

They ended up making a bed on the floor of the lounge, out of some spare blankets and pillows Amy found in a cedar chest. They made love together on the floor and then fell asleep in each other's arms: but not before Amy took the engagement photo of Karen and Rory and turned it to the wall.

Just before dawn, Rory woke to find Amy rigid and unresponsive in his arms, eyes staring and breath shallow; this time, for just a second, Rory felt a sliding, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.


	11. Chapter 10

When Amy and Rory entered the kitchen that morning Karen was already there making tea. The black circles under her eyes and her quiet demeanor told them everything they needed to know: she'd experienced the shifts in time as well. Twice during the night Amy and Karen had felt the awful sensation of time and space sliding out of joint, and now even Rory was able to pinpoint an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Whatever was happening, it was happening more often, and with greater force.

Karen and Rory each took a seat at the kitchen counter, and without a word, Karen placed a mug of tea in front of each of them. Amy tasted hers experimentally: milk and two sugars, just the way she liked it. She guessed that Rory's was more than likely white with no sugar, just the way he liked it. Somehow this little gesture of familiarity was more intimate and more shocking than any of the past day's revelations. She was still staring at her mug of tea when Karen broke the silence.

"Where's your friend?" Karen asked, when she saw that the Doctor hadn't returned.

"He probably spent the night in the Tardis," Amy reasoned.

"You mean his spaceship?" Karen asked with a raised eyebrow. "The one that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside?"

Amy gave her a weak smile, "Yep, that's the one!"

"Well, whatever may be going on, this is something I've got to see. Help yourselves to breakfast while I go get dressed."

Amy reached for a banana from the fruit bowl while Rory stood up to root through the cupboard. He found a box of Shreddies and proceeded to make himself a bowl while Amy chewed on her banana thoughtfully. "Rory," she said after he'd poured his milk and sat back down next to her. "Rory, I'm really worried: what happened to the Amy and Rory who live here? What happens if we can't find them? I don't feel right just leaving Karen alone…"

"I know what you mean," Rory said around a mouthful of cereal. He swallowed before continuing, "This is going to sound weird, but I'm starting to think of her as…family."

"I know what you mean," Amy agreed. "God, it's weird to think we only met her yesterday. Already, she feels so…familiar."

Rory nodded, his face contemplative. "And what if we do find them? Our doubles, I mean: are you ready to meet yourself?"

Amy considered the question. After a moment's thought, she answered simply, "God, no!" When Rory laughed, she went on, "Honestly, I'm not sure I wouldn't get on my nerves. But what about you? Would you get along with Mirror Rory?"

"Aw yeah!" he answered immediately. "It'd be brilliant! We could go down the pub, play some darts, maybe kick the ball around on a Sunday afternoon…he'd be like the brother I never had." Amy looked skeptical. "Hey," Rory protested, "I'm a good guy! I think we'd get on swimmingly." At Rory's teasing smile, Amy laughed.

Karen returned just then, dressed for the day in jeans and a loose tunic. She wore her hair the way Amy always did, hanging down in waves around her face. When he saw her Rory thought how easy it was to picture a world with Karen in it as Amy's sister. They were so alike: from the way they stood, to their freckled faces, to the way they held their heads at an angle when someone else was speaking. He spotted a little golden "K" hanging around her neck: it was a mate to the "A" Amy always wore, a gift from her mother on some distant birthday. How was it possible that he and Amy were becoming attached to this woman so quickly, a stranger who hadn't existed in their lives until yesterday? And could they really call her a stranger when everything about her felt so comfortable and familiar?

"Are you two ready to go?" Karen asked, juggling a large canvas tote bag from one shoulder to the other.

"Yep!" Amy answered for the both of them. Her conversation with Rory had lightened her mood, and she was excited to show off the Tardis to her new "sister". "Now, just wait until you see my spaceship!"

"Your spaceship?" Rory asked with raised eyebrows.

"You got it!" Amy said mischievously. "Care to argue the point?"

"Nope!" Rory called on his way out the door. "Come on, then: let's go see _your_ spaceship."

Walking back through the village to the Tardis was an interesting experience, now that Amy understood they were in a parallel universe. All the way, she was on the lookout for little details that might have changed: a fence painted brown instead of white, a broken step unexpectedly mended, an azalea bush appearing where none had been before. But despite the occasional cosmetic change here and there, the village couldn't help but feel exactly the same as it did in her world. The essential Leadworth-ness of everything wasn't altered in the least.

She recognized every person they passed along the way. She scrutinized them for changes as well, but it was hard to play spot-the-difference in a casual encounter. She couldn't exactly ask Mr. Haverhill if his wife had still left him for a dance instructor five years ago, or ask Anna Malcolm if she'd still crashed her car into Mrs. Latham's rose trellis on her sixteenth birthday. She tried interrogating Karen on the subject of village gossip, but she didn't seem to be in the mood for a chat. Whenever they met someone they knew, she'd smile and say hello as if everything were normal, but as soon as they passed her face was drawn and pensive again.

They were almost to the village green when Amy spotted Jeff Angelo heading their way. She groaned inwardly: he'd definitely want to stop for a chat. As it turns out, she needn't have worried.

"Hey!" he called as they came closer. "It's the Pond girls!" With that, he made a gun out of his thumb and index finger and struck a James Bond-like pose on the pavement.

Amy rolled her eyes and was about to respond when Karen did so for her. "Get bent, Jeff!" she replied without breaking stride.

Amy laughed uproariously at the confused look on his face as they passed him by without stopping. Rory waited at least until they were out of Jeff's earshot before he joined in. Amy nudged Karen in the arm with her elbow, inviting her to join in the mirth. "Hey, nice one, Kazza!" After a moment's pause Karen finally broke into a smile.

"Ok," she admitted. "Yeah, that felt good. That 'Pond Girls' crap was really starting to get old."


	12. Chapter 11

As they approached the Tardis, Amy's mood bordered on giddy; it wasn't often she was able to unveil the splendor of the Doctor's time machine to someone new. In fact, the only person whose first reaction she'd witnessed had been Rory, and his wonder and awe had taken a backseat to the revelation that his fiancée had locked lips with her formerly imaginary friend.

As Amy practically skipped ahead of the other two, Rory kept company with Karen, whose excitement was still tempered by worry for her sister and husband-to-be. When Amy turned around to flash them both a brilliant grin and urge their feet to move faster, Karen's eyes softened, and she couldn't help but return Amy's smile. When Amy was ahead and out of earshot again, Karen turned to Rory. "She's different, you know."

"I'm sorry?" Rory asked politely.

"Amy. Your Amy, that is: she's different from my Amy. I couldn't quite put my finger on it before, but I think I'm starting to get it. She's an adventurous spirit, isn't she?"

"To say the least!" Rory agreed. "Your sister isn't?"

Karen was thoughtful for a moment. "No, she is; she definitely is. She was always dragging me along on adventures with her, ever since we were kids: the old rock quarry in the woods, climbing Mrs. Halper's forbidden apple tree; the thing is, she always needed me along with her, needed my input. She never makes a move without consulting me first. The only bad decisions she ever made were out of spite because she was mad at me. But your Amy: she doesn't live by anyone's leave, does she?"

"No," Rory answered seriously. "No, she most certainly does not. If Amy ever asks for advice, it's only because she wants another person to agree with what she's already decided."

Karen smiled weakly. "It's almost better, though, isn't it?"

Rory was about to wonder if maybe it was _not_ better for Amy to go barreling ahead without anyone else's input, especially from the point of view of the man who was going to spend the rest of his life with her, but he didn't get a chance: they'd reached the Tardis, and Amy was hurrying them forward.

Karen's first reaction to the Tardis was not all that Amy had hoped for. She looked at the large blue box in the way one _would_ look at a large blue box: with a little bit of curiosity as to its purpose, a fleeting drop of confusion as to how it got there, and ultimately a large smattering of indifference as one realizes that one isn't really all that interested in the answer to the first two questions, anyway. Of course, that's just the reaction the Tardis's chameleon circuit was designed to inspire.

Trying to find the right reaction to answer Amy's beaming smile, Karen finally settled on a note of polite inquiry: "Is this it?"

Amy's smile grew wider. "This," she said, "is just the beginning!"

Amy opened the door to the Tardis with her key and flung the door open wide. She stepped aside to let Karen have a full view of the magic box's contents. With a glance at first Rory then Amy, Karen shrugged her shoulders and stepped inside. The other two stood outside, awaiting her reaction. They were not disappointed.

Predictably, Karen spent only a brief moment staring into the Tardis's depths before flying out the door once again. She examined the strange blue box for the second time, this time with new eyes. She ran her hands over the door, and knocked on the sides; the familiar hollow thud of wood answered her efforts. This time, when she re-entered the ship, she stayed inside. Rory and Amy followed to find her staring all around her in wonder.

Karen struggled for a moment to find her voice. "It's…"

"Bigger on the inside," Rory and Amy finished in unison.

"Yeah," she agreed. "It really is. It literally, actually is! I thought you'd meant it as some sort of metaphor…"

Amy took her hand and was going to start showing her around when the Doctor re-entered the console room. "Good!" he exclaimed, "you're here!"

"I take you have news?" Amy asked.

"News, well, not really…more, speculation, let's say. I've been running scans all night, and I have a few theories about what's causing this disturbance in reality." For a moment, he cast a guilty look at Karen. She was still awestruck by the vastness around her and didn't notice.

"Theories are good," announced Amy. "Any answer is good at this point, really—I don't know how many more times I can go through…that…you know."

"The time shifts," supplied the Doctor. "Yes, I imagine they're rather disturbing for the uninitiated. I have some idea of what's causing them, though. You know magnets?"

Three pairs of eyes stared blankly at the Doctor while three brains tried to figure out where he was going with this apparent change of topic. Rory was the first to venture a reply. "You mean like what you use to stick things to your fridge?"

"On an elementary level, yes. I was actually thinking about magnetic dipoles." At his companion's confused stares, he went on. "Magnetic dipoles, like the magnetic poles of the earth. You have the North and the South, one opposite the other, each attracting the other, creating a magnetic field in between. Or think about those fridge magnets Rory mentioned—they have a north and a south pole, too; have to have! You could try to separate them, cut the magnet in half, but each will become it's own separate magnet with its own north and south pole. You can try to alter the magnet, but it won't work: stability must be maintained, equal and opposite forces."

"All right," said Amy. "I think I remember this from science class. But you said this was supposed to explain the time shifts?"

The Doctor treated her to a withering, impatient look. "I'm getting there, dear. Anyway, where was I? Yes, magnets! Do you know how you can make a magnet?"

"Yeah," said Rory, hoping he was on the same mental track as the Doctor. "You can take a piece of metal and rub it against another magnet."

"Exactly!" the Doctor cried. Rory couldn't help but beam with pleasure at having gotten it right, for once. "Exposing an amenable substance to an existing magnetic field will produce a newly magnetized object." His bright, beaming smile seemed to indicate he thought his explanation over. The silence of his audience told him otherwise.

"Ok, I'll go on…remember the crack in our Amys' walls?"

Three heads nodded.

"Well, that crack is like a gigantic magnetic field. The crack is bursting, practically _crackling_ with energy! And this magnetic field runs through time and space, through countless parallel worlds, beginning on one Amy's wall and ending on the other's. And what, or rather who, is on either end of this tremendous field?"

Karen was the first to say it: "Amy."

"Both Amys," agreed the Doctor. "Magnetic dipoles. They've each spent their lives growing up on top of this crack in time and space, absorbing its energy, acclimatizing to its field of energy. It would appear that the Misses Amy Pond are the North and South poles of the universe."

Amy took a deep breath. "Wow," was all she could come up with.

Rory nudged her gently in the ribs. "No need to get a big head about it, Pond."

Amy would have laughed, but she was still trying to wrap her mind around what the Doctor had said. She was trying to think of what his speech would mean to her and why she and Karen were feeling time rip apart when Karen spoke up: "So what does it mean that both Amys are here now?"

The guilty look they'd glimpsed only briefly before now took up residence on the Doctor's usually smiling face. He began cautiously. "There's obviously a very big disturbance in the stability of the universe; that's why we can feel reality rending and shifting. The only explanation I can come up with is that something has happened to one of the poles, and reality is bending itself round trying to restore the balance."

"One of the poles?" The look on Karen's face as she spoke was dangerous. "You're talking about my sister!"

"I'm afraid so, yes," the Doctor conceded gently. "That's why we were brought here: a disturbance in the balance of the universe pulled Amy through to the other side of the crack. Rory, the Tardis, and I were just pulled along with her."

The Doctor's calm, gentle tone did little to calm Karen, whose voice was beginning to border on hysteria. "But what has happened! What has happened to my sister?"

The Doctor grabbed her by the arms and forced her to look into his eyes. "I don't know, Karen, I really don't; but we are going to find out."


	13. Chapter 12

**Author's note: Thank you to everyone who's stuck with this story so far! I know that the updates have been slower lately, and this is a short chapter, but I'm just working out where to go with the rest of this story. I know where I want to end up: I just have to get there now. Anyway, I'll just keep soldiering on with my own little reality, no matter what the show may be doing to my precious characters. ;-)**

It seemed that even the Tardis wasn't safe from the unbearable time shifts that were now starting to occur more frequently and more close together. Rory's feeling of unease was more palpable this time, and he could feel a numbing buzz like ants walking over the surface of his skin as he stroked Amy's hair and waited for her to come out of her trance. The Doctor silently and gently took Karen's hand and took up vigil by her side. In a few minutes, the two women were back, breathing shakily and hugging their arms close to their bodies.

"This has to stop," Amy said unsteadily. "Something has got to be done! What can we do?"

"I'm working on it," the Doctor answered quietly. It was unusual to see him so subdued, and extremely unsettling: after all, if the Doctor didn't know what to do, what was their other option?

He stood at the center of the large, cathedral-like console room, eyes staring unfixed at the air in front of him. Occasionally, an eye would twitch, or he'd mutter something under his breath. Once Amy thought she heard the word "magnet" mumbled he cocked his head to one side and deepened his squint. It seemed impatience would overwhelm her, and she was about to offer her own suggestions, when suddenly his head snapped upright again and a look of pure epiphany spread over his features.

"Eureka!" he shouted. "Yes, eureka, I think: I've always wanted to say that! Brilliant word, eureka, not said often enough." Amy's exasperated stare prodded him back on his original train of thought. "Where was I? Oh yes! Eureka! Or rather, magnets!"

"Again with the magnets!" In all their travels, Amy still hadn't learned to let the Doctor finish in his own time. She'd always been a woman of few words and quick action, and had never learned to cope with dithering. "What it is about magnets this time?"

"Well as I said before, dear Amy, magnets need equal and opposite forces to maintain stability. Somehow, the balance of the universe has been thrown off: we just need to restore it."

"Right, that sounds simple enough." Ever the practical one, Rory cut right to the heart of the issue in trademark deadpan style. "Restore balance to the universe: that should be easy enough, we'll knock that off before lunchtime."

The Doctor didn't let Rory's sarcasm dampen his mood. "Maybe not lunchtime, but definitely by tea! That is, if I can find a power source…"

"Doctor, we still don't know what you're talking about," Amy reminded him.

"Right, sorry," he continued. "You see, the two Amys were acting as opposite poles on other sides of this crack in the universe. What the crack is exactly, well, that's a crisis for another day—but for the moment, we need to stabilize it before reality bends 'round and causes some serious collateral damage."

"Collateral damage?" Karen raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

"This, Amy's, and possibly several other worlds."

"Right," Amy adopted Rory's sarcasm. "Collateral damage."

"Anyway," the Doctor continued. "How do we stabilize an enormous crack in time and reality? Something has obviously happened to one of the pole's keeping the energy in the crack stable. Well, how do you make a magnet?"

"By exposing another object to the magnetic field," answered Rory.

"Another object," the Doctor went on, "or another person!" He was beaming at them now, proud of his obviously ingenious solution.

Karen was the first to speak. "What other person?"

The Doctor gave her a soft and sympathetic look. "Karen, I don't know what's happened to your Amy; but if we can't find her and fix whatever has happened to her, we'll need someone else to take her place. Someone sensitive to the crack's energy, someone amenable: we'll need you, Karen."

Doubt was written all over her face. "You'll need me to what? What will I have to do, exactly?"

He was ready with an answer. "That's where a power source comes in! I need a great surge of power to open the crack momentarily and spill out a large dose of energy: energy that can be absorbed by the awaiting dipole substitute."

"Well what about the Tardis?" Amy supplied. "There's more than enough energy here."

"'More than enough' is exactly right. No, we can't risk exposing that crack to energy from the Tardis: the whole thing could go supernova. Metaphorically, of course…" The Doctor assumed his thinking posture. "No, we need a more conventional kind of power, something from this world."

"Well," Rory offered tentatively, "there's always the Leadworth power plant."

That dangerous smile Rory and Amy were so familiar with now crept back into its place across the Doctor's expressive face. "Brilliant!"


	14. Chapter 13

Gaining access to a power station in a town you've spent most of your life in is just as difficult as one might imagine it would be. It wasn't as if they could just flash the psychic paper and pretend to be inspectors come to check on the turbines. Roger Campbell, the plant manager, used to coach Rory's football team when Rory and his son were boys, and Glenda Havermann, who ran the front office, played bridge with Amy and Karen's aunt; they would know if the three crazy kids they'd known their entire lives had suddenly changed careers.

Amy pointed this out to the Doctor. His solution was summed up in one simple word: "Reconnaissance!" When his three companions didn't immediately congratulate him on yet another brilliant plan, he went on: "We'll go on an information-gathering mission, find out the setup, see what's going on, find out the best time to gain access!"

For a 907 year-old alien who'd experienced all the wonder, sorrow, and brilliance the universe had to offer, he reminded Amy of nothing more than a seven year-old boy with a new spy kit. She expected at any moment he would pull out a pair of goofy sunglasses and claim they were "X-ray eyes". Before he could get his hopes up, she thought she'd set him straight on one issue: "I'm not wearing any silly disguises."

He scoffed. "Silly? All you'd have to do is put on a little bit of makeup, and…"

"No!" Amy reiterated.

The Doctor's face fell. "Well, then what's your brilliant idea?"

Amy wanted to remind him that it was not her job to flesh out his crazy schemes for him, but when he put on that wounded puppy look she just didn't have the heart. Fortunately, Karen seemed ready to contribute to his plan.

"Rory," she began, "you remember that blood drive the plant sponsored this spring? And the H1N1 vaccine clinic last fall?"

Rory saw where she was going and nodded. "Yeah, the hospital sends nurses over to the power station all the time!"

"All we have to do," she continued, "is show up in our uniforms and pretend that we're doing a blood pressure screening. Or…oh, I know! We can say we're there to screen for aspergillus or something. Rory and I will occupy the workers listening to lungs and doing cheek swabs or some other medical nonsense, and Doctor, you can pretend to be a…well, a real doctor, or a lab tech or something and wander around under the pretense of swabbing things for mold. Amy, you volunteer at the hospital sometimes; you can assist him."

"I like it!" the Doctor beamed.

"It sounds like the plot of a Scooby Doo episode," Amy complained.

"I like it even more!" the Doctor enthused. "Ooh, I get to be Fred!"

"Oh no way!" Amy argued. "You are so Scooby." Laughing, she caught Karen's eye. "I'm Daphne!" they each shouted at the same time.

The Doctor turned to the last of the group. "Which means Rory is…"

"Shaggy," Rory concluded dryly. "Fantastic."

Trying not to laugh, Amy gave him a sympathetic pout and squeezed his hand. "_He so is!_" she mouthed to Karen as soon as he wasn't looking.

"Well gang," the Doctor said, eyes sparkling, "let's get a move on!"

With Karen and Rory in their scrubs, and the Doctor sporting a borrowed lab coat and flashing his psychic paper, gaining access to the power station was easier than they'd thought. Karen brought along a bag full of assorted medical equipment and a stack of official-looking forms with lots of little ticky boxes, asking personal questions about weight, diet, mucous discharge and bowel habits. She and Rory set about taking people's blood pressure, listening to their lungs, looking in their noses, and doing any other distracting medical procedures that occurred to them. If anyone got too curious about what they were doing, they would frown down at their clipboards and order the person to produce a urine sample. There's something about holding a jar of one's own bodily fluids that serves to dispatch with any desire to ask questions.

Meanwhile, the Doctor, towing Amy behind him, had pretty much the run of the place. They'd tried to send along a junior foreman to act as guide and supervise his work, but one embarrassing and confusing conversation about fungi and its effects on the human body and several swift and sudden dashes around corners later the poor man was heading back to his desk, shaking his head and wondering what exactly had taken place.

As Amy had anticipated, the Doctor was like a kid in a sweet shop, skipping between gauges and valves with an enthusiasm better suited to a holiday theme park. He tried several times to stop and explain to Amy what a particular bit of equipment was and what it did, and how it could be improved upon, but eventually her silent, withering stares penetrated his shields and he stopped bothering. Amy thought their tour of the wonders of modern electrical production would never end, when finally the Doctor found what he was looking for.

"Ah, this should do it! Shift supervisor's office." Inside the office, he managed to find a work schedule for the plant. As expected, after five o'clock all of the office workers went home, and after ten o'clock only a few workers and a handful of security officers were manning the power station. The Doctor managed to copy down a list of the workers who would be present, and where each of them would be.

Not surprisingly, after studying the documents he'd "borrowed" from the power station, the Doctor determined the best time to gain entry would be sometime in the wee hours of the morning, when the plant was the most deserted. After the four made a hasty retreat, carrying along their medical equipment and boxes of "samples" and promising to be in touch if the results found anything alarming, Rory pointed out that they probably could have determined that on their own, without a need for him and Karen to risk their professional reputation.

The Doctor scoffed. "Yeah," he said, "but we wouldn't have had nearly as much fun, and I wouldn't have found the schematics I need to flesh out my brilliant plan."

"By the way," Amy put in, "just what is your brilliant plan?"

"All in good time, my darling Amy; just a few minor details to work out."

Rory nodded his head in agreement with Amy's eye roll. "I may be new at this, but so far I find myself slightly worried by your idea of what counts as a 'minor detail'."

Just ahead of them, the sound of Karen's cell phone rang from the depths of one of the bags she was carrying. It took a few moments to find the right bag and then dig for the phone. The group stopped just ahead of her as she finally answered on the last ring.

"Have faith, Rory: it always comes out right in the end!" the Doctor beamed.

Rory mumbled his answer just under his breath. "It's not necessarily the end that I'm worried about, but all the bits that happen in between."

A few weeks traveling with the Doctor, and Rory was finally getting used to the daily experience of mortal peril. He was also beginning to trust the Doctor: really, he was! He'd spent most of the first week alternating between stunned silence and angry indignation: this posture of gentle nagging was much more representative of Rory in his natural, relaxed state. It was a strategy he'd adopted after years of running around after Amy. It wasn't that he didn't trust her or he didn't like being included in her adventures: it's just that someone needed to be there to remind her of reality and the dangers that came with it. She needed someone to notice the warning label on the can of spray paint. She needed someone to observe that maybe the branch wasn't strong enough to hold both of their weights. Mostly, she needed someone to remind her that she was human and fallible and _perishable_.

The Doctor wasn't human, and Rory didn't know if he was perishable or not, but he was certainly fallible; Rory had witnessed that much. It seemed like the Doctor could use someone to remind him of that fact: Amy wasn't going to do it. In her eyes, the Doctor could do no wrong. For all of their sakes, someone needed to play the voice of reason; and if the Doctor could only see it, he'd realize that Rory's attempts to ground him in sanity, annoying as they might be, spoke volumes about the other man's growing acceptance for the madman with the blue box.

Rory continued to fret and argue with the Doctor until he was interrupted by Amy tugging at his sleeve. He followed her gaze to where Karen was standing just a few feet away from them, her mobile pressed to her ear. He hadn't heard any of the conversation up until this point, but he could make a fairly good guess at the content. As a nurse, he'd seen enough people receive bad news to recognize all the telltale signs: the stunned, awkward silence; the wide-eyed stares broken up by bursts of too-rapid blinking; the pale, bloodless face and shaking hands. He swallowed the lump forming in his throat; it dragged like molten lead down into the pit of his stomach.

Finally Karen took the phone from her ear. She stood awkwardly on the path, staring at her mobile with furrowed brows. Amy was at her side, gently reaching out a hand to rest on her would-be sister's shoulder. There was a pause before Karen seemed to register the touch. She met Amy's eyes and flinched in obvious pain. In the beat of a second her fragile composure collapsed. She screamed and pushed Amy's hand away. Rory stepped in to help, and the look that she gave him stopped him dead in his traps. She howled like a wounded animal, spinning 'round to escape the hands that reached out to comfort her.

It took the Doctor and some previously unseen setting on his sonic screwdriver to get her calmed down enough to drag her the rest of the way home.

It was some time after that they were able to get out of her what was wrong.


End file.
